Our Foremothers Rock!…

Our Foremothers Rock! : A Celebration of the Women in Our Lives Through the Work of Faith Ringgold and Gee’s Bend

Three Sessions Available:

May 30 – June 2, 2017 ($205) (Sold Out)

June 5 – 9, 2017 (Sold Out)

June 12 – 16, 2017 (Sold Out)

9 – Noon

$225

This is a class to celebrate women and all that they create in the world!

Over the week, we will be looking to the work of the following two important artistic female entities to encourage us to look at the women in our own lives and inspire our own creative journey.

Gee’s Bend is a remote peninsula community in Alabama that was very important during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. During this time, many female community members became part of the Freedom Quilting Bee, which was designed to help family and community income by selling handcrafts to the outsiders. Women would come together each day to work on beautiful quilts, in turn teaching the skills to their children and grandchildren. Today, the quilts are highly sought after, and the women now have respectable incomes and prestige in the national community and have helped to revitalize a community in need. Each quilt they create, is created with remnants of the womens’ lives, and is pieced together symbolically to tell a story. They are awesome on so many levels.

Another woman we will connect with this week is Faith Ringgold, an artist and activist who creates across a wide variety of mediums, but is best known for her narrative quilts, many of which have been turned into children’s books! Ringgold has used many of her memories of growing up in Harlem, during the depression, as a theme in her work. In 1972, Ringgold invited her mother, who was a talented seamstress, to collaborate on a piece of art. This eventually led to the making of their first quilt. Ringgold was full of stories that she wanted people to hear and, since no one would publish the autobiography she had written, she decided to use quilts as a way to share the stories both with image and text. Ringgold makes these by blending traditional quilting techniques with acrylic painting and even sharpie on fabric! Her Story Quilts now hang in the greatest museums in the country.

During our week together, we will pair these women and movements, with self-identified female heroes in our own lives, to artistically celebrate what each has created in her life, as well as her greater contributions to the world, ultimately showcasing the strong, talented, worthy, and prolific artists that women innately are just by being alive!

As an extra surprise this week, two wonderfully strong and inspiring women creators in our community, Bianca Howell and Mary Perisho, the faces behind the hands-down best fabric and sewing/quilting class store in the city, Owl and Drum, are giving each kiddo who signs up not only for this class, but for any summer MAKE class, a 15% discount on their next store purchase! When a class is purchased, I will share your email with Bianca and she will personally send you your promo. Owl and Drum is truly one of my very favorite places in Tulsa and this gift they are providing is the BEST! We will be using fabric in our artwork this week, (which I will email everyone about as we get closer to camp dates). I will be providing some material for all students for sure, but if your kiddo (or you!) wants to use your discount to purchase some special pieces you love, it could be a cool opportunity to use it!

This camp will also include an additional element of meaning and kindness within our greater community as we will spend a portion of our week working as our very own ‘quilting bee’ – and with the help of Bianca and Mary to offer the finishing expertise – we will create a class-made community quilting project which we will get to donate to a local non-profit assisting women in need. I will share more on the specifics as they develop, but it will be a sweet experience for sure!

I hope to see you there and can’t wait to hear all your stories!

Use the PayPal button below to sign up. If you are having trouble or can’t enroll in what you were hoping for,please contact me herein case I can help or need to look at the possibility of adding a class. Thank you!

Please select your class and session below. A 50% transferable, but non-refundable, deposit due to reserve your space, and the remainder is due the day of the class.